July-August 2004

July 2, 2004

Harriet and I went out to a very nice house concert organized by the FSSGB. He sang a lot of old favorites, and also some new material. It was nice to see him in such an intimate venue. I have fond memories of sharing the stage with him in the 1996 Midsummer Revels.

July 3, 2004

A masterful piece of propoganda film making. George W. Bush and his gang are even worse than I had previously thought.

A particular masterstroke was his handling of September 11, which featured several minutes of a totally black screen, but with sound effects that let everybody in the theatre provide their own visuals, very effective.

July 4, 2004

32 mile CRW with Harriet on the Picchio fixed-gear tandem, Lexington and points northwest. Farthest we've gone on this bike, and first time riding it with a group. It is definitely a rocket ship, but doesn't mix well with singles...we have to go too fast up the hills, and tend to drop folks.

July 5, 2004

A tragic conflict between a young American woman and an Iranian family, when her house is erroneously auctioned off to the Iranians, and neither side is willing to compromise or to yield. Ben Kingsley is great as the Iranian paterfamilias.

Last summer, my neighbor told me that he had been watching live coverage of the Tour de France on the Outdoor Life Network. Neat! I immediately tuned in and saw ... nothing.

It was like watching the legendary Mad magazine "sport" 43-man squamish, played underwater. Yes, I enjoyed seeing these 170-odd fellows in pastel jerseys pedal through the gorgeous French countryside. And yes, I know how to ride a bike, and I always make a little joke about Lance Armstrong at my local Post Office. (They seem to have no idea who he is.) But the Tour is, like, geek to me.

Two nights ago, I invited Sheldon Brown, a veteran cycling journalist who uses the Internet handle "CaptBike" at his website sheldonbrown.com/org, to watch Stage Nine of the Tour with me. Brown also runs the successful HarrisCyclery.com website, and he has played King Paramount in the seldom-produced Gilbert & Sullivan business satire, "Utopia, Ltd." So he understands everything.

Before switching on the television -- he had taped OLN's edited broadcast that morning -- Brown asked to deliver some prepared remarks. "The Tour de France is not a sporting event, it is a series of sporting events," he said. "It is not like a baseball game, it is like a pennant race."

There are several separate races taking place during the Tour. There's the race for the yellow jersey -- like chasing the batting title in baseball -- which Armstrong has won five years in a row. A Frenchman named Thomas Voeckler is currently wearing the yellow jersey, meaning he has the best overall time so far. But the jersey will probably change backs several times before the racers finish under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris July 25.

There is simultaneously a race for best sprinter on the Tour (green jersey); best climber (red polka-dot jersey); best young cyclist (white jersey); and for fastest team. And each of the 20 race stages is itself a hotly contested race-within-a-race. "Most of them are won by somebody you've never heard of, and who you will never hear of again," Brown explained. "But that will be the biggest event in his life. It will be the headline in that man's obituary: `Winner of Stage Nine of the 2004 Tour de France."

Now for the question and answer period:

1. Please define: "peloton"; "drafting"; "breakaway"; "time trial." The peloton is the main pack of riders, sometimes stretching out a hundred yards or more. Most of them benefit from drafting, meaning they are cycling in the slipstream of the riders ahead of them, and pedaling less hard. The first and last riders in the peloton get the same time at the finish line.

I asked Brown why small groups of riders "attack," or break away from the pack. "Because it's a race," he answered. Duh.

In the three individual Tour time trials, the riders start at staggered, set intervals and are not allowed to draft. The trials are called "the races of truth." Armstrong does well in the time trials, because he is a very fast rider. Double duh.

2. What happens if a rider gets a flat tire? He gets a new bike, usually in a minute or less. Ditto in a crash situation, if the rider is uninjured.

3. When do the riders eat? In a long stage, they are handed special sacks of food, called musettes, in a designated "food zone."

4. Can you go to the bathroom on a bike traveling 25 miles per hour? Yes, but this isn't something you'll see on the Outdoor Life Network. Plus: don't try this at home.

5. When should you start paying attention? Next Tuesday. Starting then, two time trials and the Alps stand between the elite riders and the yellow jersey.

6. Why do the French hate Lance Armstrong? Because he is an American, and he beats them at their own game.

So what was Stage Nine like? Beautiful, and boring, until the end. Two riders, Filippo Simeoni and Inigo Landaluze, had staged a dramatic breakaway for 70 long miles, at times leading the pack by as many as 10 minutes. But right at the finish line in Gueret, the peloton caught up with them. So Brown and I had watched more than two hours' worth of bike racing to see a 172-way tie.

July 17, 2004

July 24, 2004

This is part of the Man-Kzin Wars series, a couple of novellas and a story or two, which it turns out I had previously read. One of the novels is a bit of an homage to Casablanca. I enjoyed reading these stories a second time, I'm very fond of this series.

July 31, 2004

August 3, 2004

I enjoyed the book, and the film did a good job of following it. Hollywood couldn't resist the temptation to show a big battle scene (the Crater at Petersburg) which was not a major part of the book. Been a while since I read it, so I'm not sure what they had to leave out. Fine performances however, and I would recommend this film.

August 6, 2004

I'm not completely sure why, but I don't ever recall enjoying cycling as much as I have been this summer. Most days I've been taking roundabout commutes, adding several miles in each direction.

Part of it has to be the weight loss, part of it, I suspect is my iPod, which makes the experience much more enjoyable.

August 17, 2004

August 18, 2004

August 19, 2004

Partially filmed in Padstow, Cornwall, this charming comedy features the Lady of the Manor left a penniless widow by her wastrel husband's suicide. She never expected to have to work for a living, and has devoted her life to gardening. With the help from some other locals, she turns her green thumb to a different type of gardening, marijuana, to stave off the banker who wants to foreclose on her manse...

August 23, 2004

A masterpiece from the Master. This film broke a lot of rules, most especially by killing off the female lead, Janet Leigh quite early into the film. This was such a shocker that Hitchcock insisted that theatres refuse admittance to the film once it started.

I suspect that this was the first impetus for a major change in moviegoing: I recall the usual moviegoing routine back in the '50s was "lets go to the movies" without any regard to the schedule. You'd just arrive at the theatre at whatever time you found convenient, sit through whichever feature was in progress, then watch the other feature and the first part of the one you walked in on. "This is where we came in" was the cue to leave, unless the film was unusually good.

Sometime after the '50s, this changed, and people started checking schedules so they could arrive in time for the start of the film. Psycho may have been the film that started this trend.

August 25, 2004

August 27, 2004

A so-so monster alien flick. Looks like the creature shop had a lot of fun making this film.

August 28, 2004

Drove out to Marblehead with Harriet and George, to watch the Firemen's Muster. Haven't been to one of these since I was a kid. We brought bikes, parked in Beach Bluff and cycled to the field for the Muster.

This is a great traditional New England event, featuring a parade of antique hand-pumped fire engines, and a very enthusiastic squirting contest. Marblehead has two teams, the Okos and the Gerrys.

Afterward, we rode out West Shore drive to Grace Oliver's Beach for a swim. The water was chillier than we had expected, so we didn't stay in long, but it was quite refreshing anyway, as the day was very hot.